Post-conflict States Research Articles

Leadership and Post-Conflict State Rebuilding: Iraq after 2003: Case Study

امتازت الساحة السياسية والاجتماعية العراقية بضعف البناء الذاتي والموضوعي للقيادة، الأمر الذي ولد أزمة قيادة، انعكست بالمحصلة النهائية على جودة عملية إعادة بناء الدولة في العراق. فكانت عملية البناء هذه تفتقر لأبسط متطلبات النجاح وشروطه، كما عانت من تعثر كبير وواضح كانت أزمة القيادة إحدى مسبباته، إذ أفرز الواقع العراقي قادة صراع وليس قادة بناء، وهذا الأمر يؤكد وجود أزمة ثقافية في أنتاج القيادات الواعية والمدركة والمتوافقة مع العمل الديمقراطي. وباتباع منهجية الانتقال من العام إلى الخاص بالاعتماد على المقاربات الوصفية والتحليلية، عمدنا في البحث إلى دراسة مفاصل الموضوع، القيادة- بناء الدولة- دور القيادة في بناء الدولة، كل على حدة وربط كل مفصل في نهايته بالسياق العراقي. وقد خرج البحث باستنتاج أن أزمة القيادة في العراق تجسدت من خلال مجموعة من الأزمات المستدامة التي هي بحاجة فعلية لحلول جذرية، استناداً إلى خطط استراتيجية مدروسة بعيدة المدى، لاسيما في ظل غياب الرؤى البنائية وسيادة المصالح الذاتية، إلى جانب تأثير الواقع الاجتماعي على ممارسات القيادة، الذي عزز من غلبة الهويات الفرعية الضيقة على حساب الهوية الجامعة، الأمر الذي أثر على مسألة بناء الدولة.

Participatory constitution-building in Fiji: A comparison of the 1993–1997 and the 2012–2013 processes

Abstract Participatory constitution-building during times of transition from war to peace or from authoritarian to democratic rule is quickly becoming an established norm. This article analyzes and compares two Fijian participatory processes; the 1993–1997 process and the 2012–2013 process. The purpose of doing so is to understand the extent to which these processes were genuinely participatory in terms of extending the Fijians’ possibility of influencing the content of the constitution. The article concludes that these processes were merely symbolic in terms of public participation; that there is not much that public participation can achieve in and by itself; and that the sequencing of public participation and secluded political elite negotiations in the context of constitution-building during times of transition is a field of research that is in dire need of further systematic analysis, particularly as an increasing amount of post-conflict and post-authoritarian states endeavor participatory constitution-building.

The Conceptual–Contextual Gap between Non-recurrence and Transformative Police Reform in Post-Conflict States

Abstract The idea of a systemic and holistic approach to police reform that addresses larger structural issues, such as poverty or discrimination against marginalized groups, is an attractive one. It is understandable that reformers and critics aspire to develop police forces that are so well-trained, transparent, and open to external oversight that responsiveness to community needs broadly understood becomes second nature. However, it is not enough to identify the needs of the most marginalized—policy-makers must identify where and how aspirations for change fit the domestic political economy in the security sector. This article has outlined a conceptual–contextual gap in policebuilding, pin-pointing three other main barriers to transformation (i) the necessary preoccupation with and diversion of resources to technical reform, (ii) the need to deal with immediate post-conflict security needs, and (iii) a political economy that does not support the type of responsive, socially democratic culture where transformative policebuilding becomes feasible.

Fiscal capacity in “post”-conflict states: Evidence from trade on Congo river

In many post-conflict states with a weak fiscal capacity, illicit domestic levies on trade remain a serious obstacle to economic development. In this paper, we explore the interplay between traders and authorities on Congo River - a key transport corridor in one of the world’s poorest and most conflict-ridden countries; DR Congo. We outline a general theoretical framework featuring transport operators who need to pass multiple taxing stations and negotiate over taxes with several authorities on their way to a central market place. We then examine empirically the organization, extent, and factors explaining the level of taxes charged by various authorities across stations, by collecting primary data from boat operators. Most of the de facto taxes charged on Congo River have no explicit support in laws or government regulations and have been characterized as a “fend for yourself”-system of funding. Our study shows that traders have to pass more than 10 stations downstream where about 20 different authorities charge taxes. In line with hold-up theory, we find that the average level of taxation tends to increase downstream closer to Kinshasa, but authorities that were explicitly prohibited from taxing in a recent decree instead extract more payments upstream. Our results illustrate a highly dysfunctional taxing regime that nonetheless is strikingly similar to anecdotal evidence of the situation on the Rhine before 1800. In the long run, a removal of domestic river taxation on Congo River should have the potential to raise trade substantially.

General Framework for Post-conflict Reconstruction in Yemen

The war in Yemen, which escalated in March 2015 when a Saudi-led coalition intervened, with comprehensive blockade and air campaign has turned a poor country into a humanitarian catastrophe. The impacts of the conflict in Yemen are devastating—with nearly a quarter of a million people killed directly by fighting and indirectly through lack of access to food, health services, and infrastructure. The economy has collapsed, and fighting has ravaged the country’s infrastructure. The reconstruction and recovery of Yemen will demand rebuilding the economy, restoring state institutions and infrastructure and repairing the social fabric. Good governance plays a key role in rebuilding Yemen as a post-conflict state. The task is thus to build transparent, efficient and participative governance structures that can help to stabilise the volatile transformation of post-conflict society. This paper intends to clarify how good governance can be promoted in Yemen as conflict / post-conflict country and which role the political and administrative system could play in this context. This paper is based on a literature review of the main theories and issues involved in post-conflict reconstruction, coupled with an analysis of relevant case studies and good practices from different countries. The main recommendations most urgently needed are; establishing safety and security, strengthening constitutional government, reconstructing infrastructure and restoring services, stabilizing and growing the economy, and strengthening justice and reconciliation organizations.

Non-recurrence, reconciliation, and transitional justice: situating accountability in Northern Ireland’s oral history archive

ABSTRACT Guarantees of non-recurrence remain a complex component of transitional justice. Tasked with ensuring that past traumas are not re-enacted, post-conflict states typically focus on dismantling security forces or paramilitary sectors that participated in conflict violence. This fulfils the state’s judicial responsibilities by condemning what is often the most visible sign of conflict: large-scale violence and human rights abuses. Other organisational entities are also capable of facilitating movements toward preventing the reoccurrence of armed conflict. In this regard, archives are uniquely positioned to engage with aspects of non-recurrence mechanisms and have the potential to encourage bottom-up community engagement while broadening the scope of transitional justice work. Using Northern Ireland’s proposed Oral History Archive (OHA) as a case study, this paper first untangles the intricacies of non-recurrence as an enigmatic aspect of transitional justice and reconciliation as a cornerstone of the OHA’s archival constructs. It then offers the concept of archival accountability as a better suited architecture for the OHA which could subsequently integrate community-based practices into this particular transitional justice setting.

When aid builds states: party dominance and the effects of foreign aid on tax collection after civil war

ABSTRACT Does foreign aid strengthen or weaken post-conflict states? We examine the effects of aid on tax collection after civil war, an important dimension of state effectiveness. While the literature emphasizes aid’s perverse effects, the relationship between aid dependence and the growth of tax collection is unclear. We argue that the impact of aid reflects its political utility for ruling elites in consolidating their authority after civil war. While dominant parties subvert tax strengthening reforms to solidify their political base, elites in more fractionalized settings rely on external political backing to manage internal challenges to their authority, and are more likely to comply with donor conditions. We test this argument through a Latent Curve Analysis of tax collection rate growth in post-civil war countries from 1978 to 2012. We find that aid is associated with slower growth in tax collection in dominant party settings, and more rapid tax growth in politically fractionalized settings. The findings highlight the need for attention to internal political dynamics to explain aid effectiveness after civil war, and point to opportunities to strengthen institutions in some post-conflict countries.

Politics of Identity in Post-Conflict States. The Bosnian and Irish Experience

Politics of Identity in Post-Conflict States. The Bosnian and Irish Experience

Human Rights and International Obligations of Post-Conflict States

During a period of transition from armed conflict to peace, or after an armed conflict, questions are raised about the international human rights obligations of post-conflict states. Because of the challenges faced by many post-conflict states, questions need to be asked about the difficulty of applying the rules of international human rights law in post-conflict states. This paper analyses this difficulty and highlights the uncertainty and rigidity of international human rights law. It addresses two main ideas. First, the extent of the applicability of international human rights law to post-conflict states is not clearly defined. Second, the burden that the rules of international human rights law put on the shoulders of post-conflict states is too heavy in certain situations and there is a need to establish clarity and flexibility in new post-conflict international human rights law.

Enria, Luisa. The Politics of Work in a Post-Conflict State: Youth, Labour and Violence in Sierra Leone. James Currey, 2018.

Enria, Luisa. The Politics of Work in a Post-Conflict State: Youth, Labour and Violence in Sierra Leone. James Currey, 2018.

Understanding and progressing health system decentralisation in Myanmar

ABSTRACT Despite much lauded change in recent years, Myanmar’s national health system still lags behind its regional counterparts. Decades of civil war and military rule have created, at the national level, a ‘centralisation by fiat’. This was most recently consolidated prior to the beginning of the country’s transition to democracy through the military-drafted 2008 constitution, which centralises power in the military. In part, Myanmar’s experience is also one of ‘decentralisation by default’. Civil war as well as the country’s geographic and demographic circumstances led to greater independence of well over a dozen territories and varying degrees of strength in sub-national structures. In the current period of relative de-confliction and political dialogue, discussions of decentralisation and federalism have never been so important – not the least within political dialogue following the nationwide ceasefire agreement. Moreover, several recent studies have found that public health was a top tier indicator of how Myanmar people of all ethnicities perceive the country’s progress. Decentralisation of the health system, as well as some centralisation or convergence of previously separate health systems in terms of information sharing and resource sharing, will be crucial to consolidate the progress made in the peace and democratisation processes. Indeed, the establishment of a decentralised and equitable public health system should be a leading priority for stabilising the country and ensuring its future prosperity. This paper explores decentralisation in Myanmar’s health system through current theoretical frameworks. It suggests that Myanmar’s experience of ‘decentralisation by default’ may find similarities in other post-conflict and conflict states.

РОЛЬ КОЛОРИСТИКИ У ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯХ КОНФЛІКТНОСТІ

The current situation in Ukraine is quite difficult: the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict has been going on for seven years, systemic shifts and changes are taking place in society, cardinal reassessment of values and production of qualitatively new socio-cultural paradigms are taking place. In these conditions, various conflicts intensify: interpersonal, intergroup, interparty, and so on. The Ukrainian military, which took part in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) and the Joint Forces Operation (JFO), needs quality treatment, restoration of lost functions, social, physical and psychological rehabilitation and return to full life. The paper is concerned with the study of peculiarities of colors choice by veterans of the Anti-Terrorist Operation and the Joint Forces Operation. It is proved that a person's perception of different colors depends on the emotional state, as well as attachment to one some colors, indifference to the second colors and the rejection of the third colors. The study allows us to conclude that color is a basic component and attribute of the culture of any community. Colors are associated with an extremely diverse system of associations, images, meanings, meanings, symbols, which are carriers of information about traditions, mentality, ethnic picture of the world, national character, national image of the world of different peoples. The study identified the important role of color in the study of conflict of both individual and collective actors. Our proposed scheme for the formation of the diagnostic function of colors: reflection – state – categorization – representation – knowledge – attitude – use, allows us to determine the role of color in the study of the conflictity of different subjects. The research with the use of M. Luscher's color test in which individual and collective laws of conflict of various spheres of life in the conditions of the Russian-Ukrainian interstate armed conflict were revealed is analyzed. M. Luscher's color test is a unique "early warning system" for conflicts and stressful situations at an early stage of their deployment. This test also provides additional information for psychotherapeutic work with patients, allowing to identify the compensatory capabilities of the subjects. The conflictizational dimension of the M. Luscher test is extremely important for the psychological rehabilitation of ATO and OOS veterans, as it can detect pre-conflict, conflict and postconflict states of subjects.

The Staging of the Hidden: Interrogating an Ambivalent Response to a Crime Against Humanity

In December 2018, a former member of a white supremacist group and perpetrator of a violent crime, Stefaans Coetzee participated in a panel discussion at a reconciliation conference in South Africa. In 1996, Coetzee was a key executioner of a bombing which killed four people and injured 67. After pleading guilty, Coetzee was sentenced to 40 years in jail and 20 years later, he was released on parole. Thirty years earlier, 25 black South Africans were convicted of the “necklace” murder of a black policeman. Fourteen of the 25 were sentenced to death. On appeal, a majority of the murder convictions were overturned and all the death sentences commuted. Drawing on these two cases, this essay explores contrasting responses to engaging with perpetrators of political violence through the lens of implication. It examines the shifting boundaries of legitimacy in the realm of political crime and analyses the underlying influences and imperatives of accountability for crimes against humanity committed under apartheid and in a nascent post-conflict state.

UN Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding: Progress and Paradox in Local Ownership

AbstractUN peace operations have increasingly focused on the importance of “local ownership.” The logic is simple. For peace operations to succeed in helping war-torn states to create accountable, democratic institutions grounded in the rule of law, peace operations need to internalize democratic principles by making UN missions accountable to different domestic constituencies—crossing ethnic, religious, racial, social, and gender lines—within the war-torn country. As part of a special issue on “The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay argues that while there is widespread consensus among UN member states and UN bureaucrats that local ownership is necessary, UN peace operations have faced significant obstacles to creating true local ownership. These obstacles include the UN's focus on host-government ownership; the challenge of creating trust with different domestic constituencies that represent diverse perspectives; the supply-driven nature of UN intervention; and the mismatch between the UN's ideal post-conflict state and the preferences of post-conflict societies. To make UN peace operations more responsive to post-conflict societies, UN staff often have to bend or break rules established only to hold them accountable to their member states.

UN Peacekeeping and Local Rule of Law Initiatives in the Central African Republic

To strengthen the local capacity of post-conflict states, multidimensional peacekeeping operations increasingly focus on strengthening the rule of law and building sustainable peace in the mission area. Considerable success was achieved in the Central-African Republic where the UN mission MINUSCA supports the local government in establishing the Special Criminal Court and restoring other local judicial mechanisms. This paper explores how MINUSCA supported local rule of law mechanisms in the Central African Republic, and how this contributed to so-called local justice. Special attention goes out to MINUSCA's support to the CAR government in establishing the Special Criminal Court, by including the local population in doing so as well as by strengthening local ownership and knowledge on existing judicial mechanisms. In arguing that the joint effort made by UN peacekeeping troops and local actors strengthens local justice, this paper underlines the importance of tackling the war economy as an important obstacle to establishing a functional rule of law in the CAR.

THE EFFECTS OF FOREIGN AID ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN AFGHANISTAN (2001-2015)

The aim of this study is to realize the issue of foreign aid disbursements as practiced in Afghanistan by using objective perspective to specify the effects of foreign aid on economic growth. This research study will recognize the impacts of foreign aid disbursements on economic development as affected by the political and strategic considerations and also by corruption levels which could have significance to future foreign aid programs in developing and post-conflict countries similar to Afghanistan. This research uses secondary data and both qualitative and quantitative methods which is conducted by collecting information from books and articles also collecting socio-economic statistics from reports and surveys to analyse the conditions in Afghanistan. The study examines both advantages and disadvantages of foreign aid on economic development using theory, as well as empirical analysis of transnational countries. The results indicate that foreign aid programs alone are not sufficient and efficacious for the economic growth of post-conflict states like Afghanistan. However, after two decades of foreign aid inflows to Afghanistan, the socio-economic conditions has not been improved, in order to make contribution to development process of poor countries, the potential advantages assists as providing resources to improve infrastructure, agriculture, education and transfer of technology. The GDP growth of Afghanistan has been declined, level of corruption has been increased, poverty rate has been risen and unemployment has been increased in this period. The intended conclusion is to provide recommendations to make foreign aid programs in Afghanistan useful and beneficial to its economic development.

Pockets of liberal media in authoritarian regimes: what the crackdown on emancipatory spaces means for rural social movements in Cambodia

ABSTRACTCambodia’s ruling party cracked down on the press, civil society, and opposition in the lead up to the 2018 national elections. Drawing on interviews with Cambodian journalists who lost their jobs, as well as long-standing research on rural struggles in Cambodia, we argue that the Cambodian state’s crackdown on media is part of an ongoing transformation of authoritarian populism that has reduced the space for rural collective action. The state’s repression and co-optation of media also signals a change in the ruling party’s brand of populist authoritarianism: from simultaneously courting and spreading fear amongst rural voters, to casting rural people aside. The media is a space of both emancipatory and authoritarian potential, and for the journalists who saw themselves as building the post-conflict democratic state, the crackdown signals the loss of a more emancipatory, democratic imaginary. This study contributes to analyses of authoritarianism as practice by drawing attention to the various scales and spaces in which it is produced, enacted, and imagined.

Landscape after genocide

The March of Peace (Marš mira) is a 63-mile, 3-day walk through eastern Bosnia organised in memory of the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide and traces in reverse a death march. Marchers take a trail from Nezuk, stopping at mass graves found along the way, arriving at the memorial cemetery in Potočari a day prior to the annual mass funeral for victims who have been recently exhumed. This article charts the journey from the death march to the peace march and asks the reader to assess the efficacy of embodied memory-work and the ethical responsibility to undertake – and responsibilities when undertaking – alternative memory-work in post-genocide landscapes and sites of mass murder, through a series of rhetorical shifts. A number of frames are enacted to challenge other more linear and conventional approaches, allowing the sociological and political productivity of engaging with post-genocide landscapes in a post-conflict state to emerge, referencing dissident forms of remembrance through the method of walking-with others while traversing this post-genocide landscape on foot. Travelling-with around 8,000 mourners, some of whom were survivors of the death march, the aim here is not to simply describe what is taking place; rather, the journey is undertaken in order to activate a space – a space within which I might engage with issues of landscape, conflict and memory in the context of their current discussion within cultural and political geography, genocide studies and memory studies, and more importantly to speak of genocide and a post-genocide landscape.

Electoral governance and democratisation in Southern Africa Post-conflict states: Electoral Management Bodies in Angola, Mozambique and South Africa

Electoral governance and democratisation in Southern Africa Post-conflict states: Electoral Management Bodies in Angola, Mozambique and South Africa

Post-Conflict State Reconstruction in Somaliland: An African Perspective of Statebuilding Processes

In January 1991, the central government of the Somali Democratic Republic collapsed as a result of local insurgency against Mohamed Siyad known who is also known as ‘Barre’. Somaliland, a former British protectorate which had united with Somalia in 1960 with the aim of uniting the divided Somali people in the Horn of Africa, declared its unilateral withdrawal from almost three decades union with Somalia but remains unrecognized by the rest of world. This paper will explore Somaliland’s journey of peace and statebuilding processes which has adopted a bottom-up, locally-driven, and traditionally-fashioned approach to post-conflict state reconstruction. The study adopts a qualitative research approach by conducting an in-depth interview and reviewing existing academic literature on African state reconstruction approaches. The study will critically apply and examine Aka Claude’s theory of ‘building from below’ in relation to the statebuilding process of Somaliland.